Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Monday CRM and Close CRM offer different solutions for managing customer relationships and sales workflows, each with a unique focus. Monday CRM, built on Monday.com’s work management platform, provides customizable pipelines and task tracking, making it ideal for teams that prioritize flexibility and workflow automation. Close CRM, by contrast, is designed for sales teams, offering tools like call tracking, email automation, and pipeline management to streamline the sales process. In this blog post, we’ll compare their key features to help you decide which platform best suits your needs—or if folk might offer a more balanced alternative with user-friendly contact management and customization options.
What is Monday CRM?
Monday CRM is a sales focussed customer relationship management platform built by the team behind Monday.com, designed to help sales teams manage contacts, sales pipelines, and workflows.
Key features of Monday CRM
- Contact management: Provides a central place to store and organize contact details, track communications, and maintain records of interactions with clients and leads.
- Deal management: Allows users to track the progress of deals across stages, helping teams monitor the sales pipeline and update deal statuses as they progress.
- Task management: Users can create tasks related to deals or contacts, assign them to team members, and track their completion to ensure follow-up actions are taken.
- Lead tracking: Features tools for capturing and managing leads, assigning them to team members, and tracking their progress through different stages of the sales funnel.
- Pipeline customization: Enables users to customize their sales pipelines to align with specific business processes, allowing different stages and workflows based on deal progression.
What is Close CRM?
Close CRM is a sales-focused platform designed to eliminate the complexity of traditional CRMs, offering a streamlined and user-friendly experience tailored for small businesses with ambitious growth goals. Known for its intuitive design, Close provides robust features like automation to reduce manual work, built-in communication tools for faster follow-ups, and powerful integrations to fit seamlessly into any tech stack. Whether you’re managing leads, collaborating with a team, or scaling sales efforts, Close is built to save time and help small businesses succeed.
Key features of Close CRM:
- Fast setup: Simple and quick to implement, allowing teams to start using the platform without delay.
- Intuitive interface: Easy-to-navigate dashboard tailored for speed and productivity.
- Built-in communication: Integrated calling, email, and SMS tools for seamless interaction with leads and clients.
- Automation tools: Includes workflows, smart views, and task automation to streamline repetitive tasks.
- Powerful reporting: Customizable sales and activity reporting for actionable insights into team performance and revenue trends.
- Team collaboration: Features like shared inboxes and task assignments to keep teams aligned and efficient.
- Secure and scalable: Designed with robust security and scalability for growing businesses.
- Integrations: Offers over 100 native integrations and Zapier compatibility to sync seamlessly with existing tools.
Monday CRM vs. Close CRM: Feature Comparison
Let's break down the key features of two CRM software solutions and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, and contact management.
1. Sales pipeline management
Monday CRM’s pipeline feature allows users to track the progress of deals and opportunities through customizable stages. Their pipeline can be configured to match specific sales processes, with stages representing different phases of a deal.
Close CRM's pipeline offers a streamlined, visual approach to managing sales processes, making it easy to track deals from start to finish. Their 'Powerful Pipeline View' provides a clear snapshot of all active opportunities, enabling teams to focus on what matters most. With features like drag-and-drop deal management, users can effortlessly update the status of leads.
2. Ease of use
Monday CRM offers a visually intuitive interface with customizable dashboards, making it user-friendly for teams of all sizes. Close CRM, on the other hand, focuses on simplicity and efficiency with a streamlined interface that prioritizes sales activities, making it easy for sales teams to adopt quickly.
3. Contact enrichment
Monday CRM does not offer a built-in contact enrichment feature. This means users may need to rely on third-party integrations for enhancing contact data. While Close CRM provides integrated tools that automatically enrich contact information, saving time and enhancing data accuracy.
4. Outreach
Monday CRM supports outreach campaigns with a template library and AI-assisted support, making it easier to engage with prospects. Close CRM excels in outreach with built-in calling, email, and SMS tools, allowing for seamless multi-channel communication. Users can manage all outreach activities directly within the platform, enhancing efficiency and follow-up processes.
5. Automation
Monday CRM offers basic automation for tasks like updating deal statuses and sending notifications, which helps streamline workflows but may be limited for advanced needs. Close CRM provides robust automation features, including custom workflows and 'Smart Views', enabling teams to efficiently manage leads and automate repetitive tasks for enhanced productivity.
6. Integration
Both Monday CRM and Close CRM offer integration capabilities with various third-party applications, allowing users to connect their CRM with other tools they use daily. This flexibility helps teams streamline their workflows and centralize data management.
7. Artificial Intelligence
Monday CRM includes an AI-based email generator, assisting users in composing effective sales emails. This feature enhances communication efficiency by providing smart suggestions. Close CRM does not currently offer AI integration, which may limit its ability to provide AI-driven insights or assistance in sales activities.
Price and plans comparison
Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Monday CRM and Close CRM.
Monday CRM prices
Monday CRM offers both a monthly and annual subscription plan. All their plans depend on the size of your team and starts with a 3 seat option.
- Basic: Starts from $12 per seat, per month.
- Standard: Starts from $17 per seat, per month.
- Pro: Starts from $28 per seat, per month.
- Enterprise: Undisclosed.
Close CRM prices
Close CRM offers a monthly and annual payment option. The annual subscription plan is as follows.
- Startup: $49/user/month.
- Professional: $99/user/month.
- Enterprise: $139/user/month.
Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Monday CRM and Close CRM
Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. A multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system. folk can support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment, and more. You can also use folk as a solopreneur, small to mid-size team, and large enterprise.
Key features
- Contact management: Bring all your contacts into one place seamlessly, from social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and X to multiple inboxes including Gmail and Outlook.
- Notes and reminders: Attach notes directly to a contact's profile in folk, and access them on the go. And assign reminders so you know exactly when to follow-up.
- Sales pipeline dashboard: Manage your entire sales cycle and leads with a highly customizable sales pipeline dashboard that can be used in Kanban-board view or listicle.
- Ease of use and customization: Easily customize the pipelines, dashboards, automation, email sequences, so that you can use it across your sales cycle and pipeline management – and other business functions such as recruitment, marketing, and more.
- Social media integration: Import people and companies from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, and X within a click thanks to folk’s Google Chrome extension.
- Contact sync from Gmail and Outlook: Full email sync enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
- Find email addresses in a click: Contact enrichment powered by Apollo, and Dropcontact so you can fill in missing data points with 1-click.
- Email sequences: Send email sequences with reminders if your leads don’t reply to your first emails. It includes an AI integration allowing you to personalize email at scale.
Price and plans
folk has a 14-day free trial. After that, there are affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. The annual subscription plan is as follows.
- Standard: $20 per user, per month.
- Premium: $40 per user, per month.
- Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month.
Monday CRM vs. Close CRM: What's the verdict?
In comparing Monday CRM and Close CRM, it's apparent how both offers distinct advantages tailored to different business needs. Monday CRM excels with its intuitive interface and robust project management features, while Close CRM stands out for its powerful communication tools and sales automation capabilities. However, for companies seeking a more personalized approach to relationship management, folk provides a flexible alternative. It blends ease of use with customization, making it an excellent choice for businesses looking to enhance their CRM experience. Try folk today, free.
Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses